BODIN, JEAN, characterized by Bayle as "one of the ablest men that appeared in France in the sixteenth century," and famous as the author of The Republic, and the Methodus ad Facilem Historiarum Cognitionem, was born at Angers about the year 1530. He was at one time in great favour with Henry III., but this was not of long continuance. The Duke of Alençon, however, gave him several
employments, and took him to England as one of his suite, where he had the pleasure of finding his Republic in use as a text-book in the university of Cambridge. In the Raguelgia of Boccalini he is condemned to the fire as an atheist, for maintaining liberty of conscience. He declared himself with much freedom against those who asserted that the authority of monarchs is unlimited; and yet he displeased the republicans. Upon the death of the Duke of Alençon, Bodin retired to Laon, where he married; and in the time of Charles IX. he was the king's solicitor, with a commission for the forests of Normandy. He died of the plague, at Laon, in 1596. Besides his Methodus, and Six Livres de la Republique, which Laharpe has described as containing the germ of the Spirit of Laws, Bodin wrote Commentaire sur les Livres de la Chasse d'Opius, Paris, 1555, in 4to; Démonomanie, Paris, 1581, in 4to; Fleau des Démons et Sorcières, 1616, in 8vo; Universa Natura Theatrum, Lyons, 1596, in 8vo; Paradoxes, doctes et excellents Discours de la Vertu touchant la Fin et Souverain Bien de l'Homme, Paris, 1604; and Colloquium Heptaplomeron sive de abditis Rerum sublimium Arcanis, printed for the first time in 1841, at Berlin. For some further particulars regarding Bodin, and a general estimate of his merits as a writer, see Prelim. Dissert. I.